Could you ride a bike if front wheel was welded to the frame (so turning would be impossible)?
Pop a wheelie and ride it like a unicycle.
I assume you mean the front fork was welded to the frame so you couldn’t swivel the handlebars…not that the wheel wouldn’t spin.
This is the only way.
The way you stay balanced on a bike, as it starts to fall you turn into the fall and then throw yourself the other way. Maybe a really good balance artist could do it, after all they balance staying in one spot or on a unicycle. (Except for the ones with the non-freewheeling chain, that go back and forth.)
When I was young and stupid, I learned to ride hands-free (who doesn’t?). The easiest way is with a very loose not stiff steering so leaning turns the front forks.
There was some debate on this board awhile back about things that are not entirely understood. Someone mentioned how a bicycle works. If that is true the physics of riding a bike may still have some mystery.
Anyway, the most experienced bicyclist I’ve ever met (I’m talking 100’s of thousands miles) said that the way a bike works is that the bike is constantly falling and you correct for it. That tells me that if the fork was immovable it would be extremely difficult the ride the machine unless maybe you had circus like balance.
Also, when you make a turn on a bicycle you turn the wheel in the opposite direction of the turn and then go into the turn. It’s a subtle thing but it is true. So, turning could be very difficult if not impossible.
Start a myth then send it to Mythbusters for a field test. I’ll watch but I won’t try it.
It’s called countersteering, and when you learn how to ride a bike this is one of the things that you just innately learn (IOW almost always without having any idea that you’re learning to do it). Also, a bike DOES NOT stay up because the wheels act as gyroscopes, it’s because of an aspect of physics called trail…
To add, this is really easy to test. Next time you’re on a bike, on a residential street with no traffic or somewhere else with room, get going straight and coast, and then without leaning, try turning the handlebar a small amount, and see which way you end up turning.
By turning the handlebar without leaning, it makes it easier to see that your front wheel briefly turns in the direction you turn the handlebar, but you end up turning the opposite direction as your reflexes keep you from falling over.
Seriously, this is been up this long and no one has just gone out and tried it? I’m taking my kids to the movies right now but if someone hasn’t done this by the time I get back I’m totally doing this.
http://img.tapatalk.com/d/13/09/30/qu9etu5e.jpg
I’ve been riding bikes all my life and ride my antique Harley Davidson almost daily and I couldn’t do it.
You managed to take your kids to the movie, get back and try this in 14 minutes?
Ride a bike through a puddle, then look back at the tracks, the rear wheel stays pretty steady the front however describes rather lazy side to side arcs…
No, I had a few minutes before we left and I’m impatient.
Also, for the record “cloudy with a chance of meatballs 2” was cute, and about what you’d expect.
What, no video?
I tried, but the guy in front of me kept getting up for popcorn and ruining my shot.
I would have been so disappointed with any other answer.
Post it anyway. At least I wont have to listen to the guy in front of you talking in Russian.
Keith Code has covered this topic as well with his No BS Machine:
This is true.
What is untrue it that a 2 wheels ‘anything’ will not change direction with weight shift. This is false.
And this is where the fight starts. Say you can not change direction = false.
You can not effectively steer on 2 wheels with just weight shift = true.
Trying to tell the ‘absolutist’ this will get you called crazy.
Can’t be done & can’t be done effectively are two very different things.
That Wikipedia article is pretty good. There is a bit of a misconception that countersteering works by precession and the article gives the correct explanation.
That “No BS Machine” is a good experiment, but it doesn’t actually control for all of the variables. First, a bike tends to be stable in part due to trail: If the bike starts leaning over, the leaning itself turns the front fork, in such a way to correct the lean and the direction. It’s possible that the riders were simply unable to overcome this inherent stability: One could test this with another rigged bike, where the fork was fixed in place, or with the fork bent in such a way as to have zero trail.
Second, it jumps from an experiment that shows that turning the handlebars is necessary, to a conclusion that countersteering is necessary. But this leaves out the possibility of direct steering. Can one turn left by turning the handlebars only to the left? The experiment doesn’t answer that question.